Archive of Our Own

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Roy spun around midair and aimed at the giant robot that was threatening to stomp them – and the civilians scattering in the town centre – to death. His fingers went for his EMP arrow, but he hesitated to use it.

He tapped his finger to the comms unit in his ear. “Vic, tell me we’re green,” he said, coughing at all the dust and debris that he inhaled in the process. In the corner of his eye, he could see Donna flying upwards, Kory on the other side of the robot’s head, both doing their best to break through the head and outer layer of the robot and destroy its core.

“Five… minutes,” Vic grunted. Roy couldn’t even entirely remember what he was doing, but he knew that the EMP he’d have to use would be powerful enough to take out not only the robot, but also every electrical device in a five kilometre radius. There were way too many things that could go wrong with that.

“Hurry it up a little, would ya?” he said, though he tried to keep the bite out of his words. There was silence over the channel, and Roy groaned inwardly at the thought of the team switching to private ones to gossip about the latest fight between him and Dick.

It hadn’t even been that bad, not compared to their bad bad fights. This one hadn’t even involved Bruce (much).

Something in Roy couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking to Nightwing, a blur of blue and gold as he worked to climb up the robot’s back. It had surprising few external defence mechanisms there, though the armour, according to Vic, was the most reinforced.

A green hawk swooped down and tried to sit on Roy’s shoulder. Roy tried to swat him away, and then grumbled out a “fine” and let Garfield sit on his shoulder.

“Someone’s grumpy today,” Gar said, sounding far too smug for a bird that’d almost been swatted from the sky just two minutes ago.

“How ‘bout next time I let the damn robot get to you,” Roy said. “Where’d Wally go?”

“More civilians in that building. Raven and Donna went to help. Mostly what we need is for Vic—”

“To give us the go ahead,” Roy finished. He was feeling entirely too useless down here on the ground, with no other way to help but wait until Vic had decided it was safe. “Screw it. I’m getting to higher ground. You still up for distracting?”

There was a crackle in his ear just as Gar flew off, this time shifting to an eagle. “Vic’s almost got the medical centre and aged care facility on another source,” Dick said. He wasn’t panting – Dick didn’t usually show outward signs of exhaustion, not unless it was bad, but Roy could hear the strain in his voice. He resolutely did not look towards the robot again, even as he jogged to the nearest building and shot a grapple hook to the roof.

Roy grunted as he landed, now at neck level. “Oi, ugly!” he yelled, waving his arms in the air as the robot turned in the direction they did not want it going in. “Okay, fellas,” he said into the comms. “Gar and I are gonna lead it out of here, try to get it farther away.”

“Roy,” Dick hissed in his ear. “That’s not part of—we agreed we’d try to keep it contained here. Just move enough to get it running in circles.”

“We’ve almost got everyone out,” Donna said, and the screech of a baby sounded loud enough to send feedback over the comms channel. “Kory has two patients with broken limbs, so that’s going to take an extra minute. Vic?”

“Three pacemakers left,” he muttered. “Flash?”

“Four more residents,” Wally said, his words having that garbled sound it always did when he was running. He was currently moving the people out of the aged care facility, to just outside the radius of the EMP.

“Okay,” Roy said. “Okay. Look, I’ll stick to rooftops, and the moment I’m out of range or Vic's ready, tell me.”

“Don’t do what Dick’s doing,” Wally told him. “That’s probably the dumbest move any of us are pulling.”

The robot went to swat Dick and missed, and Roy sucked in a breath even as he leapt across the rooftop as the robot’s balanced tipped, and it swayed back and forth before righting itself. “Rob?” he said said quietly, switching to their channel. “You good there?”

“Fine,” Dick said. “Quit worrying about me and focus on staying out of its reach.”

Roy flicked back to the main channel before he could reply with something sharp. Dick’s… well, if it hadn’t been for the fact that they’d been through countless arguments and spats, both before they’d started dating and after, then Roy would’ve seriously worried about whether this was it for them, if Dick was going to break it to him after this fight, that he didn’t think this was working for them.

“Almost there, fellas,” Vic told him. “And Kory’s flying out now.”

“How far?” Roy began counting in his head, planning out the next five yards. These higher apartments and commercial buildings ended at the intersection; that was where he planned on taking the shot, getting to that last building just as Gar chased it to the open expanse of the traffic lights. Less building damage, less civilians, and the only thing that would be a point of concern was if someone had gotten past the police barricades set up a few streets away.

That was when it all went pear shaped. Roy leapt over to the final rooftop, landing with a roll to soften the impact of the concrete on his body. He was upright in a crouch instantly, bow at the ready and arrow nocked.

“Gar,” he murmured. “Towards me.”

Gar went left, and the robot spun around. But they hadn’t considered its balance. They hadn’t expected it to go careening to the side, arms waving around in a very human attempt to right itself up. And Dick was still there.

“N!” Roy yelled. “Jump off!” What was Dick even trying to do?

“I’m almost,” Dick grunted, “in. Just a few more wires.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Roy said, arrow still nocked and bow following the movement of the robot as it swayed dangerously. “Weren’t you the one who said we’re a team?”

“Shut up, Roy. This is the easiest way to get it to turn off.”

“Unbelievable. I’m taking the shot.” With a twang as familiar to him as his own heartbeat, Roy’s arrow left and sailed true. It was just unfortunate that he wouldn’t get to see it land, because at that moment, just as Roy had taken his focus off the waving arms of the robot, one of its stray fingers came towards him at lightning speed, sweeping him off the rooftop before he even realised what was happening.

The wind was knocked out of him in an instant. His vision went black, and all he could feel was the intense crushing sensation of his insides, and then the sharp pain in his legs, his torso, his head.

There was probably shouting all around him, but everything felt muffled. Roy didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to wake up to feel what had happened around him.

And then, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Donna, his mind told him to get up. He had a robot to see the end of, and he couldn’t rest until he knew his friends – until he knew that Dick, stuck inside it – were all safe.

With what felt like a herculean effort, Roy twitched his fingers, trying to find his bow. White hot pain lanced through him, and it took him a moment to realise that the keening sound was coming from his mouth. “Anyone there?” he gasped, hoping his comms were turned on. “Speedy down. Mostly.”

There was silence. Roy could hear his own voice, so he was mostly sure he wasn’t deaf. But surely there’d be more sound than there was at that moment?

He did an internal inventory, just like how Dick had taught them to do it. First, Roy started with his toes, moving upwards until he’d checked to see if his legs were in order. Then he moved to each arm individually, before working his way to his torso, and finally, his head. What’s the verdict, doc? came a little Robin voice in his head, just like how Dick had used to sound when it’d only been the five of them.

Not the best, Robin, Roy told his imagination. Broken leg, cracked or broken ribs, and something pinning me down. Probably concussion on top of that.

“Oh god,” Robin said, and Roy frowned a little, as time blended together until his head started throbbing all over again. “Oh god, Roy… can you hear me? Squeeze my—”

“I hear you,” Roy rasped, voice coming out far worse than he’d expected it to. Through his blurry vision, he saw Dick’s face blanch at the sound of it. “It’s not that bad.”

At this point in their fight, Dick would typically respond with something like, yeah, and I’m a donkey’s uncle. Now, though, he continued to stare at Roy’s body, eyes tracking every inch of it.

“Kory’s moving the rubble now,” Dick continued. “It’s… you’re losing so much blood.”

“Get me up?” Roy said, though he hadn’t intended on it coming out like a question. Some part of him already knew what Dick was about to say.

But the look he received, the wounded puppy look that he hated to see on Dick’s face, was in full force as he said, “Roy, I can’t. You’ve got… your leg’s stuck under that slab of concrete, and I have no idea what your insides are like right now. Moving you could dislodge something.”

“Give it to me straight.” Roy closed his eyes.

“There’s… you’re… you might have internal bleeding. You’re dribbling blood. You have another wound somewhere that I can’t see, probably your back, though since you can still feel your legs it doesn’t seem like your…”

Roy let the words wash over him, trying to keep himself conscious, though that was more for Dick’s sake than his own. And then the reminder of the robot made his eyes snap open. “Robot?” he coughed out. Now that Dick had mentioned it, he could feel the blood trickling out, dripping slowly down his cheeks. He probably looked like something out of a horror movie.

“It’s down,” Dick said. “The wires… they weren’t the right ones. Or there were more. I cut the ones in the main unit and the robot didn’t go down like it should’ve.”

“Or there w’s a backup,” Roy said. Moving his mouth was becoming harder and harder, but he tried to focus on Dick’s voice.

He didn’t realise his fingers had twitched, moved with a subconscious desire, a need for comfort, until he felt something touch it. Dick’s gloved hand slid into his, and though there were two layers of gloves separating them, Roy’s memory could fill in the blanks.

“Stay awake, okay?” Dick’s voice, normally so sure and confident, was now quiet.

And all of a sudden, Roy didn’t want this to be the way they left things, didn’t want Dick’s last memory of them, if it came to that, to be how. “‘m sorry,” he got out, wishing they’d managed to come to some sort of conclusion before the fight. “Didn’ mean to… push. So far.”

Dick’s grip on his hand got tighter, and it probably would’ve hurt had it not been for Roy being so out of it. “No,” he said. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t apologise like you won’t get to do it later.”

“Dick,” Roy whispered. “C’mon. Quit bein’… so stubborn.”

Dick let out a sob and laugh rolled into one. “I want to,” he told Roy, voice sounding like someone had a stranglehold on it. “If you’d just… I just needed time. I didn’t want you to get your hopes up about me being ready and then be disappointed.”

Roy tried to squeeze back but his fingers wouldn’t quite work. “Couldn’t be,” he said instead. It was bittersweet, this conversation. To find out that he hadn’t screwed things up royally by asking Dick to move in with him, officially into a place of their own rather than just sharing a room at the Tower on occasion… now it’d really suck if Roy ended up dying.

Dick was tapping his comms unit, and Roy’s mind froze for a moment to see his hand covered in so much blood, the liquid dripping down to his elbow. He couldn’t even feel the wound, couldn’t feel the life leaking out of himself, but it was smeared all over Dick, staining the gold of and blue of his suit.

“God, where are they?” Dick muttered, eyes flicking frantically over Roy again. “C’mon. Tell me. Where were you gonna move us?”

Roy could feel a tactic to keep himself conscious when he saw one, but he tried to smile nonetheless. “Near Donna, prob’ly,” he said. “Joint income. More options.”

In truth, he’d already scouted out an apartment. Two bedrooms (though one had been converted into a study), open kitchen and living room plan. A wide window that ran down the side of the place, letting in sunlight during the day. They could see the Tower from the bedroom window – with Kory and Donna’s places nearby, it’d be much quicker to get there.

It wasn’t much, nothing like the facilities at the Tower, but it’d be theirs.

Then, just as Dick was slapping Roy’s face with his bloodstained hands, bright light blinded Roy. For a moment, he thought that this was it. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.

And then bright hair filled his vision, and Dick let out a choked sob of relief beside him. That was when Roy let himself fall into the black pit of sleep.